My wife Julie and I recently returned home after three days in Zermatt, Switzerland with our friends, Florian Mueck and Rose Chong, and some of their friends. Great people and great skiing!

Besides being a friend, Florian is also a fellow public speaker, my business partner and co-creator of Rhetoric – The Public Speaking Game™. One day, while taking the lift up the mountain, Florian and I shot an impromptu 45-second video. He asked what my biggest wish for speakers in 2019 is. Here’s my answer:

If you need inspiration on how you can push yourself when it comes to your public speaking, you can find lots of concrete ideas in this post.

And if you want to see more of Florian’s quick-tip videos on public speaking, visit him here on Instagram.

Wishing all the very best for 2019.
Very rarely do I find myself not fully agreeing with John. I offer a counter point. My wish for all speakers is that they find FLOW (drop into the zone) every time they speak.
FLOW is the state in which we feel our best and perform our best. If has become the holy grail of all elite performers, regardless of domain. It is characterized by complete focus on the task at hand (in our case, speaking) and also by the complete absence of anxiety, boredom, distractions, self-consciousness and self centeredness.
FLOW studies have advanced greatly in recent years–in all domains.
It is only a matter of time before all elite speakers (also all elite performers in any domain) come to make “Finding FLOW” / “Dropping into the Zone” a high priority, if not the very top priority.
For some more info and resources. http://necessarybridges.com/flow/
GOOD LUCK!

Thank you, Rashid for the (as always) thoughtful comment. In fact, I find far more agreement with your statement than might first meet the eye. I am a big fan of FLOW and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on the subject. Speakers need to be in FLOW when performing. At the same time, pushing ourselves into uncomfortable territory (from time to time) is the way that we GROW. And, eventually, that which was once uncomfortable now flows. Thus, just as in nature there is an EBB and FLOW to the tides, so too in personal development there is a GROW and FLOW.